New TSA guidelines

[bascule]

So how does everyone feel about the recent TSA guidelines forbidding people from carrying on liquids/gels?

 

How much safer are these rules actually making us, and is that added safety worth the freedom you have to sacrifice?

 

I would say the most notible thing is that the terrorist attack which was allegedly foiled in Britain demonstrates a working system. Why then are the additional measures of confiscating all liquids/gels necessary?

 

How far will they continue to regulate, and when should they stop?

[Pangloss]

Interesting subject.

 

One ABC News story I saw yesterday on TV noted that five years ago we started having to take off our shoes at the checkpoint, and we're still doing that today. The point being that a lot of these new measures may become permanent.

 

I'd like to know more about what's been stopped by airport security. There's been so much criticism of it, and how frought it is with loopholes, but have they actually caught people that way?

 

I have mixed feelings on the subject in general. I think most Americans are willing to forgoe a certain degree of privacy/freedom when they fly because of the inherent danger. The idea that there should be no security whatsoever has been relegated to the extremes. But at the same time, it's such a difficult thing to measure success with that it makes you wonder if it's worth doing.

[husmusen]

Welcome to naked airlines.

The only truly SAFE way to fly.

 

Husmusen

[Pangloss]

Just remember to bring your own seat covers. We used to sanitize them for your protection, but it was either that or the pension fund....

[Pangloss]

[doG]

I'll feel better about the guidelines when they include profiling....

[Phi for All]

I'll feel better about the guidelines when they include profiling....

I had a buddy that worked for an architectural / engineering firm and they used to send him all over the country on short notice. His profile fit a few of the terrorist guidelines (traveling alone, traveling to areas with sensitive structures, buying his tickets a few days before the flight, checking hardside equipment cases) and he would get searched EVERY SINGLE TIME he flew, sometimes a second time at the boarding gate. He complained only once, to ask why it happened to him all the time, and was told he'd been flagged for these things.

[insane_alien]

i got searched in an airport because some security guy overheard a bit of a conversation i was having with my gf that was taken way out of context. the part he heard was "...just blow it up on the plane."

 

after i found out that was what he heard i could sort of understand it but i couldn't help but constantly giggling because we were talking about the inflatable headrests you can get.

[Sisyphus]

I'll feel better about the guidelines when they include profiling....

 

Hey. If you exclude grandmothers from the guidelines, they'll go out and recruit some grandmothers.

[Mokele]

Sisyphus has a point; US suburban white kids (I forget the guy's name now) have been captured while fighting for Al-Qaeda, so we know they can recruit outside the 'profile'. Not to mention the possibility of using non-profile people as decoys by slipping stuff into their luggage.

 

Profiling is essentually a heuristic approach to searching for terrorists; it's a cognitive shortcut that's limits a search based on assumptions. This works fine for the human brain, where 'good enough' is often good enough, and assumptions are based on fairly straightforward rules like gravity, but bad when dealing with an opponent actively trying to trick you. For instance, if I'm looking for my car keys, I restrict my search based on the assumption that they're heavy and thus will not float up to the ceiling. This works well and lets me search faster...unless I have a dickhead roommate who's playing a prank on me by taping the keys to ceiling.

 

Mokele

[insane_alien]

unless I have a dickhead roommate who's playing a prank on me by taping the keys to ceiling.

 

thanks for the idea.

 

but seriously, i believe that profiling is a bad idea. terrorists, almost by definition, will use ANY means and ANY-body they can to achieve their goals.

if we search every middleeastern looking person they aren't going go "oh blast, now we can't blow up any more planes" they are merely going to recruit someone outside the profiles

[Mokele]

thanks for the idea

 

I was wondering how long that would take. ;-)

[doG]

So far profiling seems to work pretty well for flights going out of Israel....

[bascule]

The "hair gel terrorists" hadn't even purchased plane tickets yet and were arrested after the British were pressed to by the US, after being under surveillance for over a year

[Pangloss]

I heard a bit about this earlier today. I'm not sure I understand the implied reasoning behind the allegation. The article seems a bit scanty; have you heard anything further about what the administration's motive might have been?

 

If it had been a couple of weeks earlier I would perhaps link it with the Lieberman Senate race, but of course it broke too late for that.

[Jim]

Welcome to naked airlines.

 

 

With no bathroom breaks....

[Jim]

I heard a bit about this earlier today. I'm not sure I understand the implied reasoning behind the allegation. The article seems a bit scanty; have you heard anything further about what the administration's motive might have been?

 

If it had been a couple of weeks earlier I would perhaps link it with the Lieberman Senate race' date=' but of course it broke too late for that.[/quote']

 

Yeah, if the administation had been timing this for political purposes they would have had it come out around 10/31/06.

[Jim]

Sisyphus has a point; US suburban white kids (I forget the guy's name now) have been captured while fighting for Al-Qaeda' date=' so we know they can recruit outside the 'profile'. Not to mention the possibility of using non-profile people as decoys by slipping stuff into their luggage.

 

Profiling is essentually a heuristic approach to searching for terrorists; it's a cognitive shortcut that's limits a search based on assumptions. This works fine for the human brain, where 'good enough' is often good enough, and assumptions are based on fairly straightforward rules like gravity, but bad when dealing with an opponent actively trying to trick you. For instance, if I'm looking for my car keys, I restrict my search based on the assumption that they're heavy and thus will not float up to the ceiling. This works well and lets me search faster...unless I have a dickhead roommate who's playing a prank on me by taping the keys to ceiling.

 

Mokele[/quote']

 

Any group of Arabic men age 17-35 traveling in an airplane to the US are going to get profiled.... by their fellow passengers.

 

Your one example notwithstanding, I don't think al-Queda is close to build an army of suicide bombers out of whitebread American suburbanites.